The BBC must see the merit of grown-up TV

All human life is silenced around 10pm in our house for BBC4's The Killing: the splendidly grim Nordic noir detective series allegedly about the hunt for a murdered schoolgirl but really all about things that interest us more. These include: how fantastic the luminous female cop, Sara Lund, looks in her Faroe Islands jumper and how long will she put up with her macho sidekick before The Killing gets another victim - inside the Copenhagen police force?

This import works because although the material is the stock fare of TV detective fiction - beautiful young girl nastily murdered - it treats its audience as grown-ups, letting us into the family lives and contradictions of the characters and the society.

Meanwhile, BBC1 controller Danny Cohen says he wants to do more for viewers aged over 50, which makes it sound like an offshoot of Saga. But he's poking around in the right territory: there is something infantilising about a lot of prime-time BBC TV, which is why such a lot of us have forsaken it for boxed DVD sets and Sky Atlantic.

The Corporation is caught in the crossfire between arguments about quality and popularity. It hasn't always helped itself by joining the race to the bottom on channels such as BBC3, where Mr Cohen cut his controlling teeth. It has thrown in the towel on licence-fee funded tosh such as Hotter than My Daughter and placed a "question mark" over Snog, Marry, Avoid. Now how big a question mark do we think that should be?

The BBC has a large budget cut to make - and, with it, the chance to cut back on output its executives secretly know is trash but have defended for too long. I gather new chairman Lord Patten has views on this and won't be as reticent as his predecessor. Obviously the output of a channel aimed at the "replenisher" audience of youngsters isn't going to have the same tastes as the BBC1. But beyond heritage brands like Doctor Who, evanescent hits such as Gavin and Stacey and the joyous Miranda, there's not enough to make us love it.

Mr Cohen wants more mature women on screen. Hear, hear: but doing what? We've grown wise to the broadcasters' trick of shunting them into daytime shows and off-peak newsreading. Presence isn't the same as authority. He'd also like fewer grizzled male detectives. That's a relief: how many miserable, midlife, hard-drinking cops can we bring ourselves to care about?

Yet over on the minority channel, amid the documentaries about baby-boomer bands, we have a ray of hope. The lovely Ms Lund combines anxious single motherhood with brainy crime-solving in a rainy city, and we're glued to it. Find us a British-made The Killing, BBC1, and we'll come back to you.

In our family, we all feel the Gunners' pain

Woe has descended, for we are Arsenal fans. Even our six-year-old's door is plastered with pictures of Arsene Wenger's finest, who were somehow indisposed come the showdown against Man United. Still, there is perverse fun to be had studying Arsene's refusal to accept that he has just delivered the football equivalent of the Somme. Excuse number one: "This wasn't an 8-2" game." Er, yes, it was. Even better: "You should give me more time to say if I have got it completely wrong." Oh, all right then. A football blogs crows, "I'd 8-2 be an Arsenal fan right now." The pain. The humiliation.

Beauty and the A-list

What a barometer of fickle taste the capital's beauticians are. I notice that the star celebrity clients cited to impress us are changing faster than the Arsenal line-up. Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet no longer top the skin A-list. Charles Worthington has just hired Nathalie Eleni as his star beautifier: she boasts Olivia Firth and Emma Watson undergoing "black diamond exfoliation with pomegranate enzyme". I'm not sure what can top black diamonds for a wrinkle cure but, like Olivia and Emma, pomegranates are very 2011.

* The Proms season thunders to a close at the Royal Albert Hall and one of my highlights has been the Glyndebourne production of Rinaldo, semi-staged by a cast capable of turning a 300-year-old work into a modern musical delight, complete with characters in black PVC cycling across the Albert Hall stage. If this doesn't bring new admirers to opera, what can?

Let me commend the sorceress Armida's vow for all those wondering how to deal with office politics in September. I have great desires and great hopes and must harbour no doubt. With my commanding power, I shall subdue the world.